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To Make Gravy Without Meat

A savory gravy made from onions, butter, water, beer, spices, and toasted bread, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Make Gravy Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the fried onions to a saucepan with water, beer, peppercorns, salt, lemon peel, cloves, mace, walnut pickle, mushroom catsup, soy sauce, essence of anchovy, sweet herbs, and toasted bread.

  2. Simmer all ingredients in a covered saucepan for 20 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture and let it cool, then remove the fat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned in butter to build a deep, savoury flavour base for the gravy.
Butter
Fat used to brown the onions, adding richness and browned flavour.
Beer
Liquid that adds malty depth to the gravy as it simmers.
Toasted bread
Toasted brown on both sides, adding roasted flavour and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Onions cooked until deeply browned develop sweet, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions leave the gravy tasting flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, beer, lemon, clove, walnut, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, beer, lemon, clove, walnut, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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